Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach will both fly Pride flag in June — but not Oceano CSD
Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach will both display the Pride flag in front of City Hall during June — in a move to recognize and show solidarity with local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) residents, officials said.
The Oceano Community Services District will not be following suit.
“We are apolitical,” Oceano CSD director Shirley Gibson said at the district’s board meeting Wednesday. “We provide services. We don’t do anything beyond that, so I think it’s better for us to just have a policy of the two flags, the state and the U.S. flag, and leave it at that.”
The Grover Beach City Council on Monday proclaimed June as Pride Month. The city will once again display the Pride flag throughout June.
On Tuesday, the Arroyo Grande City Council approved plans to display the progress flag at City Hall and Heritage Square Park throughout the month of June.
The progress flag is a rainbow Pride flag that features an additional five-colored chevron, meant to represent transgender folks and marginalized LGBTQ+ communities of color.
On Wednesday, Erica Andrade, co-director of LGBT+ support organization 5 Cities Hope called into the Oceano board meeting Wednesday asking the district to consider flying the flag along with its South County neighbors.
Andrade had previously asked for the district to consider the issue in June 2020, and an item regarding Pride month and a flag discussion has been listed on the district’s “future agenda items” since then.
The request Wednesday kicked off a heated discussion among board members about whether the district should talk about flying the flag at its next meeting, or whether it should avoid the topic all together.
In the end, the majority of the board said they would prefer to not talk about it, and the item was not placed on the next meeting agenda. The board also chose to remove the issue from its “future agenda items” list.
“I am not objecting to that specific flag,” board vice president Karen White said during the meeting. “My point is, flags have become so political. People curse you when you fly the American flag, OK? The state flag, the Pride flag, the (Thin) Blue Line flag, whatever flag you are flying, you are going to get cursed at. My point is ... we don’t have any authority to make any rules to govern any of those issues, so there is no point to us doing that.”
During the meeting, Oceano CSD general manager Will Clemens said his current policy is to only allow the U.S. flag and the California state flag to be displayed at the district properties, adding that other flags are not allowed.
Some members did oppose the board’s decision.
“I want the record to reflect that I believe we should fly the flag for at least a week just to show inclusion,” Director Allene Villa said. “Grover Beach, Arroyo Grande, the whole world is doing it.”
The Oceano CSD’s refusal to consider flying the Pride flag was upsetting for Denise Andrade, wife of Erica Andrade and co-director of 5 Cities Hope.
Denise Andrade said that the organization began in Oceano, so it was disheartening to hear that the board did not want to discuss showing its support for the local LGBTQ+ community.
“I wish they could have at least put it on the agenda for the next meeting just to discuss it,” Andrade said. “Oceano obviously has a really special place in our hearts as a nonprofit, so to have them not even consider it for more than what felt like 45 seconds, it was rough.”
Andrade said it was especially difficult given how supportive both the Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach city councils have been recently of 5 Cities Hope and the larger LGBT+ community as a whole.
“To have the city councils be so outspoken on it and to be so overwhelmingly supportive of the community and our nonprofit specifically, it’s really special,” Andrade said. “Especially because a lot of our board members grew up in the Five Cities, and I don’t think we ever could have imagined this as teenagers, to see our city councils flying rainbow flags.”
5 Cities Hope board members have discussed reaching out to the Oceano CSD directors to talk about other ways the district could show support for the LGBT+ community in the future, Andrade said.
“Honestly, it doesn’t even have to be the fact that a rainbow flag is flying,” she said. “It’s the fact that they can at least have the door open in the future, for it to happen, maybe five years from now ... It’s not always going to be overnight, but to start the process now, I think is important and to start that discussion within our community.”
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